Sophie Watt

I studied history as an undergraduate at the University of Paris VII where I also completed a Masters Degree in colonial history working on the rise of the nationalist movement in Cambodia.

After a few years of teaching in France and Scotland I completed a Masters Degree in French and Francophone literature and an interdisciplinary PhD in Modern French History and Literature at the University of Iowa. Following the completion of my doctoral thesis on ‘The Discursive Construction of Minority Identities in Modern France’ I took up a Teaching Fellowship at the University of Aberdeen before joining the department of French at the University of Sheffield.

My research interests include: colonial and neo-colonial history, migration studies; cultural history and memory; postcolonial theories of textuality and discourse analysis (production and writing of history);trauma and violence in contemporary France; identity constructions (Jewish and colonized in particular); critical discourse analysis and translation studies.

I am currently working on a number of projects dealing with the concepts of hospitality and alternative representation of migration at different militarised border zones in France.